


Slipping Away

by dettiot



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:38:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dettiot/pseuds/dettiot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She knows something is wrong</i>.  Spoilers for Human Nature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping Away

Something's gone wrong. It's not a conscious thought--hard to have those when your body is being painfully rewritten cell by cell--but more of a feeling. Flashes of emotion, scraps of memory, they all tell him that the Chameleon Arch doesn't seem to be working.

_clinging to an iceberg, listening to the shouts and splashes growing fewer and fewer, a stillness growing that is as cold as this April night._

_fear fear fear frustration worry danger fear longing love heartbroken fear fear_

_evil is taking over the world, evil in metal cages, and he's the good guy, that's who he's supposed to be, and it's his emotions that make him strong, but they're not enough, he wishes he could wrap himself in steel and keep his hearts safe_

_fear fear fear fear PAIN!_

XXX

She knows something is going wrong. The Chameleon Arch is handling the biology fine--it's she that is having trouble. For she is rewriting his memories as his body is reshaped from Gallifreyan (Time Lord) to Homo (sapiens). And it's not going to plan.

The old memories went relatively easily into the watch. Childhood, family, school, days at the Academy, looking for something to do, some way to strike out. Seeking, exploring, and discovering her. Those first days together, when she knew this had been whom she was intended for, not that she let him know that right away.

Travelling through the stars of space and the sands of time, meeting friends and enemies, changing from one body to another, then another and another and another. The memories are like pearls on a necklace, sliding smoothly off their string and into their safe.

Beads start moving more slowly, in a jerky fashion: memories of the Time War, the last Time War, when they both lost so much. Too much. She pushed and pushed, feeling the emotions pass on and out of his head.

And suddenly, she hit a brick wall. The memories that comprised the rest of him, they were locked away from her. From her, who had always known everything about him, from the moment he had walked inside her.

And she knew why he wasn't letting her in, could feel his sadness at doing this to her. The bricks glowed golden in his mind, and she knew he was keeping her in there. That human girl who had as much emotion as her Doctor. The beautiful child who had joined with her to keep the universe, the Doctor, safe.

The TARDIS mentally sighed. The Doctor would not give up his memories of Rose Tyler. She can understand why, can feel the pain and regret and stubbornness motivating this. Yet it can't be. She demolishes his wall, hearing his shrieks become even louder, feeling the new girl shudder at his pain. She pulls the memories out, one at a time, for they are throbbing, burning her, and she can't bear to hold more than one. 

It's taking too long. His body is human, but his mind is still too much Gallifreyan (Time Lord). She doesn't have time to completely extract the memories. She feels a wave of powerlessness: a time machine without time. She has to divide her focus now: a time and place is chosen, a history created, a personality shaped. Meanwhile, she is grabbing as much of his still-remaining memories as she can and shoves them into the watch. But there's still fragments, littered through his mind, so she finds the one thing his Homo (sapiens) brain has: the subconscious. She shoves them in there, closes the door on them, hoping they will not always rattle and creak behind that door. But she senses it's a false hope. But she can't worry about that now, for she is nearly finished now. There is only one memory left.

_hanging on, watching her, feeling afraid and terrified and oh, his hearts are beating so fast, he can't lose her she has to hang on no no no no, not her, not there oh she's safe he caught her SHE'S GONE_

The image of the child's face is painful to her. She knows how Rose Tyler felt at that moment, and she knows, now, how the Doctor felt. And she knows this memory will leave on stain on Mr. John Smith, history tutor at Farringham School for Boys, a stain that will shape his life without even his subconscious acknowledgement. It will be deep down, and be activated with the awareness of Joan Redfern, and John Smith will want the things that the Doctor wanted. But John Smith will get them, and he will never know that he is in love not with the woman he's with, but with the woman he's never known.

The shrieks are still loud, but there's an exhaustion behind them. He's on the point of complete neural collapse, so there's nothing she can do but yank the memory away, hearing a sound that is like flesh ripping from bone, and as she transfers it into the watch, she feels everything go dark.

The TARDIS is gone, for the Doctor is gone.

XXX

Mr. John Smith sits up in his bed. The curtains over the windows are dark blocks, so obviously it is not the approaching rays of a new dawn that has pulled him from his sleep. He rubs his eyes, knowing he has had another dream. They are becoming clearer, more vivid, and more numerous. Many evenings, he sees what he can only describe as . . . monsters. Horrible creatures, ones that made his blood run cold when he thought about them. But in his dreams, he defeated them all. They all seemed unable to achieve their dangerous goals, as the Doctor, that man who looked exactly like him, foiled their every plan.

Those dreams were quite too much for him. Yet there was also another kind of dream: the ones with the girl. The ones where he acted in a most inappropriate manner towards that much-too-young girl. Holding hands, hugging her, even. Feeling her body against his, close enough for eyes to dwell on her face and nose to breathe deep of her scent. Really, it was just unacceptable. He knew how improper his behavior was, behavior that was more than matched by the girl's immodest lack of propriety.

Yet in these dreams, he never felt shocked or disgusted by their behavior. That was the truly troubling issue. In these dreams, he would be so happy to be with her, and so lost when she disappeared. When she would vanish, as she always did, he would spend the rest of the dream looking for her, searching through time and space but only finding hopelessness and despair.

Without turning on a light, he pulled on his dressing gown and slid into his slippers. He slowly moved from his bed to his desk, feeling a dimness settle over him, like the time when he woke up in his school infirmary, his broken arm in a cast and his memories hazy and disjointed. He found his journal, moving to a page that already had some scribblings on it. He picked up his pen, and bent close to the page that he couldn't see in the dark. 

And John Smith began to sketch an image of the girl, the girl that in his stories he had named Rose. 

End.


End file.
